Winter has been cold and seemingly never ending, so a few weeks ago we decided to go on a short break to FNQ.

As we’d been to Europe last year, and for some other reasons, we had a pile of Qantas points – almost enough for a return flight from Melbourne to Cairns, and if we paid a little bit more, we could get business class on the way back.

So we did that.

The only disadvantage of buying our tickets on points was that we had been booked via Sydney, rather than a direct flight to Cairns.

This was less of a problem that it might have been as I still had a few days to run on my Qantas Club membership – I’d bought a one year membership for our Europe trip last year as the departure times for our flights via Singapore to London with stopovers both ways were massively inconvenient – having the Club membership meant we could get a shower in Singapore and London, something to eat, and a gin and tonic.

(In Singapore, J who likes a weak G and T, complained about the amount of gin in the glass, only to be met by a cheery ‘oh, most people ask for a bit more’).

Qantas club domestic is not quite so good as international, more crowded, and the food not so nice, but, we weren’t complaining as it saved us having to try and find something not too overpriced while waiting for our connecting flight.

Anyway, Qantas got both us and our bags to Cairns successfully, and we picked up our rental car.

As always, what you get bears no resemblance to what you actually requested, and we ended up with a Haval Jolion – slightly larger than we wanted but surprisingly pleasant to drive, even if it had a few weirdnesses like a delay on the boot lock – apparently the idea was you lock the car, grab your bag out of the boot, walk away and the boot then locks itself.

In Cairns it was the annual Cairns festival, and we did tourist things, including a trip on the Kuranda Scenic Railway.

Operated by Queensland Rail, booking was antediluvian. No online booking system, you filled in a web form that was mailed to them, they mailed you back with options, you replied as to which suited, and then they emailed a booking reference docket, which you then printed out and showed to the ticket clerk in Cairns station, who then issued you a ticket and charged it to your card.

Even Sri Lankan railways were a little more sophisticated than that when we visited eleven years ago.

Never mind, the trip was worth it, even if Kuranda is full of tourist tat. We did luck out finding a Sri Lankan cafe on Condoo street that didn’t look anything special but did a mean line in vegetable curries.

While we were in Cairns, we ate at Yaya’s Greek restaurant. In fact we ate there twice it was so good.

The first time we had a table on the balcony and could look out on the Cairns festival fireworks. Truly wonderful Greek food, decent retsina, what more could you ask?

Being the sort of people we are we also had a look at Cairns Art Gallery. Here the gods were against us as they were between major touring exhibitions, and while what was on show was good we’d have liked to see the Margaret Olley exhibition, but we were a week too early.

We also missed the museum as we didn’t realise it was closed on Sundays.

After Cairns we drove up to Yungaburra, an old slightly hippyish town on the tableland, which was much as when we last visited back in 2014 when we brought the car up on the Sunlander.

(On our way out of Cairns we had to stop at a level crossing for the Spirit of Queensland, the tilt train that replaced the Sunlander, and we had this instant plan that at some point we would fly to Cairns, get the train back to Brisbane, and fly home after a few days in Brisbane – obviously we need to work out the details, it’s not much more than a thought bubble at the moment.

However, one thing we do know is that a stop over in Bundaberg to go visit the old pharmacy museum in Childers is fraught with difficulty with trans arriving at silly times – doing the reverse journey from Brisbane to Cairns is slightly easier, even if it means joining the Spirit of Queensland well into the evening having caught a Rockhampton tilt train service the day before.)

We had a bit of a walk at Lake Eachem in the Crater Lakes national park. It was supposed to be a circular walk but we misread a sign, and ended up coming back on ourselves, but we had a good time, encountering a colourful lizard and as well as fish in the shallows, some small turtles.

After our walk, and after stopping to pick up supplies in Mareeba, we drove back to just outside of Kuranda where we stayed in an AirBnB in the rainforest.

The next day we drove on to Port Douglas via Mount Molloy and a quick visit to Mossman to suss out Mossman gorge – essentially we only really wanted to do the walk rather than the full cultural tour thing, and we found that the more serious walk was closed due to storm damage.

After that we drove back along the coast to Port Douglas where we checked into our holiday apartment – we were staying in the same block close to the beach as we did ten years ago and everything was much the same, even though the management had changed and there had been some updates to the facilities.

Port Douglas was originally a steamship port bringing workers to the mines following the discovery of gold in the hinterland in the 1870s, but after the Kuranda railway from Cairns was completed at the turn of the twentieth century Port Douglas slid into gentle obscurity as a fishing port and holiday destination before a wave of hotel and resort building in the 1990s – now it is most definitely a holiday destination, and small enough to be walkable – there’s only really one main street and the road in along the peninsula even now.

We originally had planned on a swim that afternoon, but the surf was up and it was blowing half a gale, so we cried off. The next day, we did get in the water, the wind had dropped a bit but the sea was still pretty rough and we didn’t do much more than jump about in the breakers.

Dinner at an upmarket restaurant, Melleuca, that evening was a holiday treat to ourselves and very nice it was too.

While I was in the restaurant I got a text, which of course I ignored, J and I were laughing and having fun and the chances were it was just a scam message about unpaid motorway tolls.

Well, when we got back to our aparthotel unit I checked the phone, I had indeed had a text, claiming to be from Telstra and asking me to click on a link to help resolve a problem with my home internet. Alarm bells rang, so I logged into the Telstra app and indeed there was a genuine message about a problem with our home connection and we were running on a 4G backup connection.

Now our solar power system has a management dashboard that shows power usage and generation in real time, and if I think the power’s been out at home I log into the dashboard – if I can see real time data when the sun is up it means that we have electricity and we won’t be greeted by a fetid mess in the fridge or freezer when we get home.

This worked well as a test, until our present internet modem which includes cellular backup – the test now means we have power, but possibly our fibre optic connection is down. I can restart the modem remotely but not our fibre optic box as the Telstra app doesn’t give you an option.

So, via the app I contacted Telstra to explain I was away from home and could not do anything (like pull the cord out of the fibre optic box, count to 10 and plug it back in).

The support person, who from his name I suspect was in a call centre in Dubai, initially seemed to have difficulty with the idea that I was in FNQ and not at home and hence not able to nip back and restart the fibre optic box, but he eventually realised that I couldn’t do anything to help resolve the problem, so he upped our 4G backup data quota to allow us to us the data when we finally got home – I’m guessing he was possibly confused by the solar power system phoning home and it looked as if there was some low level usage going on.

No matter, and if the fibre optic attachment point has died they’ll have to fix it, which will probably mean a person in a van – or as happened last time we had infrastructure problems three vans (one NBN, one Telstra and a cable contractor.

Anyway, it will probably be fun sorting this out, even if it’s an odd definition of fun.

The next day we did very little and what we did do was probably not interesting to any one but ourselves.

Great travel writers never mention this but the trouble with holidays is that every so often, you have to have a day when you do your washing, tidy up and organise things, do some shopping and the rest.

To the best of my remembrance neither Bruce Chatwin, Eric Newby or Robert Byron discuss having to get their undies washed, or recount going to the supermarket to buy some of life’s necessities, but sometimes you need a day just doing the prosaic. (Actually, Peter Fleming, whose 1930s travel writing is under estimated in my opinion, does recount days like this in News from Tartary when he describes his journey, mostly on horseback, with Ella Maillart across the far west of China and Tibet, ending up in what was then British India.)

Well the day after our night out was our prosaic day – mind you not that prosaic as we started with a swim in the ocean and finished with a meal in a fish restaurant, and we hopefully ended up with enough in the way of clean clothes to last the rest of the trip, otherwise it was a bludge day waiting for washing machines and driers and the like.

We’d booked the fish restaurant purely because it was on the next block up the street from our hotel. We thought it would be good but not wonderful.

Well it was actually pretty bloody good, and that revealed a problem with Port Douglas.

There’s a lot of money around so restaurants compete with each other to provide good food and excellent service, which they do, rather than on price. I don’t mind a splurge or two, in fact I rather enjoy it, but it will do some damage to the credit card along the way, but then life is for living.

And to be honest the next day we just chilled, swam in the sea, and relaxed.

The sea was its calmest so far, blue and very little chop giving us time for a decent splash about in the surf – the best swim yet of the holiday.

As it was a Friday afternoon the beach was more crowded than it had been, and had its usual complement of pale breasted topless European backpackers sunning themselves, who were mostly ignored by the locals who were more intent on getting a swim in.

That evening we ate at a really good Thai place serving authentic Thai food with authentic amounts of chili. They took no prisoners but the food was good and went well with a couple of cold Singhas, given the night had turned sticky and humid.

The next morning we were due to check out, but we got up absurdly early and went for a final swim in the ocean – sea was pretty flat, inviting and warm. Complete cliche with the palm trees behind us but we had a good swim.

A little surprised at how few people were out for an early morning dip, but that was their business not ours.

Our next destination was an off grid cottage in the Daintree rainforest, and that meant heading to the big Woolies supermarket in Mossman for some supplies as we would be self catering for most of our time in the rainforest, that and some of the necessities of life, a couple of bottles of wine and a six pack of beer.

We were a little early for check in to our unit so we drove to Daintree village for lunch – a couple of ham and cheese wraps, and then back to the cable ferry across the Daintree, where we promptly got stuck in a massive tailback due to roadworks then on to our rental cottage which turned out to be up a fairly steep track.

Amazed at just how well the Jolion handled the track – my respect for the car is growing every day – despite it being a fairly standard SUV without a great deal of power.

Then the joy of unpacking. Discovered that the unit’s washing machine didn’t work as the cold water line was disconnected for some reason, but we were able to hand wash items and spin them so at least we would not be taking back a case or two of smelly sweaty washing.

The whole setup is very private, which is just as well as the toilet and shower are in a separate leanto necessitating some naked prancing to the shower and toilet in the morning.

The whole house is like some mad hobbit inspired fantasy – basically an open A frame with a large open area on the ground floor and a sleeping area above with spectacular views out over the ocean, but built out of local boulders and with the A frame structure plonked on top.

Rainforest

We were kept awake at night by something calling loudly in the woods behind the unit. There was said to be a cassowary that hangs about as people have been stupidly feeding it, but that wasn’t in making the racket, cassowarys (a) don’t make that sort of noise (b) are not nocturnal.

We searched for various bird calls, and the only thing we found remotely like it was an American Barred Owl, which it clearly wasn’t – our best guess is that a native owl has a similar call and it was after baby possums.

Up early the next morning to go and see crocodiles – complete with a wonderful orange tropical sunrise.

We left very early as we had booked an early morning tour and had to negotiate some fairly substantial roadworks on the road back to the ferry, and of course the ferry across the Daintree itself.

We arrived in good time and had a pretty good trip with a knowledgeable guide.

Early morning is the time to go as a lot of the crocs are lying out on the bank basking and letting their bodies warm up in the comparative morning cool.

Then back across the ferry for a lazy afternoon, dinner, and an early night, this time undisturbed by screaming wildlife, and to wake to another spectacular orange dawn.

And today we simply enjoyed the day, bludging out, reading, painting and talking.

The next day, our last, we woke to another wonderful tropical dawn and a minor crisis.

I made one cup of tea, but when I went to make a second, the power was out.

In an ideal world, the diesel powered back up generator would have started, but for some reason it didn’t.

This was a problem, as not only were we off grid we were out of cellphone range, and without a functioning NBN connection we couldn’t call anyone.

We managed to get one bar at the bottom of the garden on J’s old iPhone, so we messaged the owner.

While we were waiting for a reply, I scraped together breakfast – fortunately there was a stove top coffee maker provided, and the stove ran on bottled gas.

After what seemed a long time, but was only thrirty minutes we got a message back from the owner (who lives in Brisbane) that she had called her dad, who should be round shortly.

Dad, when he arrived, seemed as nonplussed as we were, tried all the obvious things, and decided he needed to phone a friend, which of course he couldn’t, nor could the people who installed the solar system run a remote diagnostic check because there was no internet – in the same way that I can use our solar power system to check the power is still on at home.

Anyway, armed with some photos of the diagnostic screens he went off to talk to someone about it, promising to give us an update, and advising us to go off and enjoy our day.

So we did.

We drove to Cape Tribulation, the end of the bitumen road and walked on the beach, stopped off on the way back at a place advertising organic coffee and pies for lunch.

The pies were not local, they actually came from an organic bakery in Byron bay, but still pretty good. In the middle of all of this we had a text from Dad to say he’d got the power back on, the generator was running and something seemed to have flattened the batteries over night.

Ignoring the question as to why the batteries had flattened – there had been plenty of sun in the days before to top up the batteries, and indeed why the generator had not autostarted as it should, this at least meant we could have showers at least.

We were not totally convinced about the power staying on, so we booked for a restaurant more or less at the bottom of the hill, rather than risk eating in and the power going out.

This wasn’t a great loss as we’d already eaten most of the fresh fruit and veg we’d bought in Mossman, so it would have been tinned tuna and a pasta salad with tinned asparagus anyway …

However, the whole power outage experience was quite interesting, bringing the realisation that there is this network of small hi-tech companies installing and monitoring off grid power systems all over the remoter parts of FNQ – Dad, when he came back to check on the state of the batteries mentioned that the company that looked after and maintained the system was in Townsville, some 400km away.

Strange how the arrival of the internet, and particularly the NBN has enabled this high tech side of off grid living.

And then it was over (well almost) – after our meal out at the local motel/pub we dashed to Cow Bay to have a look at it in the last of the light, and the back to our unit.

That night it rained, as in seriously tropically rained, but cleared a little after sunrise.

We were not that worried as our holiday was effectively over, and we drove back via Port Douglas for lunch and then back to Cairns for our last night in FNQ.

As the season was effectively over we could afford to splurge on a room at the Pullman, which while most of it is a concrete hotel tower still retains a grand lobby reminiscent of the grand colonial hotels still found in South East Asia. I’m guessing that the original possibly (I’m guessing again) 1930s hotel took after the ‘grand hotel of the orient model’, and at some point they replaced the back of the hotel with a modern annex.

That evening we ate at a restaurant on the waterfront. While we were eating, we were treated to another tropical downpour, but this one didn’t last and we were able to walk back before the rain started again.

Then it really was the last day.

Just to be different, we got up at 0630 for a swim in the hotel pool – cut short by another tropical squall, and then it was simply the mechanics of travel – take car back to rental company, shuttle bus to the airport, flight to Sydney, connecting flight to Melbourne, shuttle bus to a hotel as it was too late to sensibly drive back that evening.

Actually, the floor manager at the Mantra remembered us when we checked in, and gave us a voucher for a couple of drinks at the bar, so that was a plus after a long journey, and then after checking out yet another shuttle bus to the off site parking garage we use to collect our car before driving home.

Oh, and by the way, the internet was working perfectly when we got home …